Justification for Sole Source 8a Over 25 Million Great Hill Final.pdf

The Office of Acquisition Management (AQM) is conducting this acquisition using other than full and open competition for the information technology advisory and support services. The services include program, project, and portfolio management services, plus systems engineering and advisory support at the Chief Information Office (CIO) level and below. Bureau of Diplomatic Technology (DT) needs a partner who can manage efficient

IT data center operations and services, address cybersecurity challenges, affect change throughout the enterprise, leverage technology to drive management transformation, and has demonstrated expertise with the latest innovative thinking to transform IT across commercial and Federal industries. Short-term urgent information technology services task order on behalf of the Bureau of Diplomatic Technology (DT). DT estimates that the contract maximum would be $35,456,712.96

AQM intends to non-competitively issue a short-term urgent 8(a) sole source contract action to Great Hill Solutions LLC. Great Hill Solutions LLC is the only 8(a) firm that can be reasonably expected to be able to deliver the required services by August 30th at a fair market price, due to their knowledge and experience with DOS and in doing similar work.

This short-term contract will serve to provide the time needed by other 8(a) companies to carefully consider the requirement and to organize and plan for service delivery, and will allow the services to be order to be realigned under a new Department of State contract that is currently being solicited and potentially available in 2025.

The current contract will expire on August 29, 2024, before a competitive order can be solicited and awarded. The Department of State requires this short-term urgent sole source contract to a known capable non-incumbent contract to allow sufficient time for competition of successor task orders. The short-term urgent contract sole source award is to be for a one (1) year base period followed by two (2) three-month option periods.”

Period Performance Dates

Base Period 8/30/2024-8/29/2025

Option 1 8/30/2025-11/29/2025

Option 2 11/30/2025-2/28/2026

Under Section 8(a) of the Small Business Act (15 U.S.C. 637(a)), there is not a reasonable expectation that at least two eligible and responsible 8(a) firms will submit offers at a fair market price. An 8(a) sole source contract award to Great Hill Solutions is the only viable contractual strategy to continue supporting the critical and integrated services covered by the scope of this contract without risk of a break of services, loss of vital subject matter experts, and unrecoverable DOS operational impacts. The current task order provides a full range of essential information technology (IT)services, that support the State Department’s program management, software development and O&M efforts.

The Contracting Officer has determined the anticipated cost/price to the Government for the supplies/services covered by this J&A will be fair and reasonable based on comparison to prices paid for substantially similar services that are currently under contract, market prices; historical prices; and independent estimates.

The Contracting Officer will not award the planned contract action unless the

Contracting Officer evaluates and determines that the resultant cost/price is fair and reasonable.

The 8(a) sole source is the only viable contractual strategy to continue supporting the critical and integrated services covered by the scope of this task order without risk of a break of services, loss of vital subject matter experts, and unrecoverable DOS operational impacts.

If the task order ends abruptly in August 2024, the impact to the global Department of

State systems, services, and end users would be significantly and profoundly degraded or, potentially, completely void of service. This task order supports all

Department bureaus and the 275 overseas posts all of which would experience an impact should it cease to provide support.

Current operations under the incumbent contract are mission critical. The Department has developed a highly mature recompete strategy for the next iteration of the required services under this contract (which includes a major overhaul of the technical requirements) expected to result in significant opportunities for small businesses;

however, the recompete strategy will not be available for transition of services by

August 29, 2024, end date of current contract. The Department anticipates the award of a contract with task order awards possible potentially in the year 2025, hence necessitating a short-term urgent sole source contract for continuity of services and future transition to new available Department of State contracts.

If the Department were to competitively solicit the current work as-is, the Department would incur an unreasonable amount of risk:

Failure to retain key incumbent contractor staff through executing this sole source contractual strategy would create harm to government operations to Department-wide services and applications, which include the following, but are not limited to:

Enterprise Server Operations Centers (ESOC): provide enterprise-level domestic data center services, including a software-defined infrastructure, public/private cloud and overseas virtual infrastructure (VI) support. ESOC currently operates four (4) geographically disparate Data Centers, and an enterprise cloud environment, which provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) for the Department. ESOC's data centers provide 24x7x365 on-site support for all customers. ESOC supports DOS objectives by developing and delivering data center infrastructure, servers, storage, and data center support services offerings both on premise and in the cloud. The benefits of ESOC are higher system availability, data center scalability and sustainability, enhanced security, and improved cost containment for the DOS worldwide Information Technology (IT) infrastructure.

ESOC Data Center Operations: ESOC Data Center Operations contains Level 1-3 operational support services including ESOC Enterprise Operations and ESOC Site Operations. ESOC

Enterprise Operations provides 24x7x365 centralized system and problem monitoring services and is the entry point to all ESOC problem management services for customers. This service is staffed via multiple shifts to ensure continuous centralized data center systems management, server monitoring, limited server management, and customer service.

ESOC Site Operations provides 24x7x365 distributed services at ESOC West (Denver, Colorado), ESOC East (Central, Virginia), Harry S. Truman (HST) Main State (Washington, DC), and in Maryland, Beltsville Information Management Center (BIMC). ESOC Site

Operations activities are initiated from the centralized ESOC Enterprise Operations or

Management Teams, but still operate via multiple 24x7x365 shifts to ensure continuous distributed data center systems management, server monitoring, limited server management, and customer service.

ESOC Engineering and Systems maintenance staff, build infrastructure systems as directed, as well as provides continuous monitor of system state, repair hardware faults, correct configuration defects, provide periodic reports on system state and maintain systems patching and update revisions on all system components in timely manner.

ESOC Data Center Management: ESOC Data Center Management includes Asset and

Facilities Management, Configuration Management, Process and Project Management, Office, Physical Access Management, and Cloud Monitoring and Reporting.

Asset Management tracks and manages all assets that reside in an ESOC Data Center, performs physical inventory of tracked assets and report into the Department of State

Integrated Logistics Management System (ILMS) and ESOC Configuration Management

Database (CMDB), ensures annual physical inventory assets are accurate, completed and accounted for in the DOS system of record, and Ensures physical Inventory is conducted at

ESOC West, ESOC East, and DC Metro areas.

Configuration Management (CM) is responsible for maintaining the Configuration Items

(CIs) in the CMDB and ensures the accuracy of CIs in the CMDB based on physical Rack and Virtual audits. A CM team member is located at each Data Center location to provide onsite service coordination for customers and respond to management data calls, and initiate customer communication.

Process and Project Management includes managing, monitoring and provide project support through the lifecycle of projects and tasks, managing customer Service Requests (SR) through ESOCs portal, and helping perform, facilitate and coordinate efforts required for system life cycle support of COTS packages, operating systems and software and hardware platforms.

Office and Security Management is responsible for processing new and departing employees, which includes granting/revoking access to ESOC resources and DOS accounts, managing

ESOC SharePoint internal/external Portals to include managing permissions, design and deploy SharePoint sites and troubleshooting, and managing and auditing ESOC Distribution and Security Lists which include performing quarterly audits, and adding/removing members.

Physical Access Management provides ESOC customers with services that control access to the data centers. Physical access can be denied, granted, or restricted to only those who are cleared and have a business need to access the data center. Short-term or emergency access can be granted on a temporary basis to cleared personnel. Additional security measures such as Personal Identification Verification (PIV) card readers, around the clock staffing, and access auditing are in place to further control access. Perform quarterly Access Control List

(ACL) for each data center location.

The responsibilities are broad, including but not limited to receiving and shipping, inventory, transportation between locations, cable management, facility management interface, and facility GREEN monitoring.

There would be a need for the contractor to obtain a Data Center Energy Practitioner (DCEP)

Certification supporting various federal GREEN IT initiatives in addition to monitoring.

Cloud Monitoring and Reporting (CMR) includes the management monitoring and reporting of an Enterprise cloud offering which is both on-premises and within public FEDRAMP cloud providers. CMR is responsible for the monitoring/reporting cloud consumption, security posture, overall health and other service level or mandated reportable metrics. The required information will be gathered and provided through various business analytics tools to both the cloud customer and various Federal stakeholders.

In addition, if a short-term urgent sole source contract is not put in place the Government will incur significant additional costs in obtaining new resources separately through other contract means and/or government employees conducting the work. The additional costs that would incur would primarily be due the amount of time, familiarization, and training it would entail for other resources (both government employees and contractors) to come up to speed on the roles and responsibilities that are conducted through the current contract.

services, applications, and continuity to deliver the highest level of service and quality, a sole source 8(a) contract is an exceptional choice based on current performance requirements and overall stability.

DT/BMP/ITA/CM

HEAD OF THE CONTRACTING ACTIVITY

07/26/2024